For the benefit of those listeners that are not familiar with the Lord's move in China in the first half of this century, maybe you could say a short word.

Yes, in the early 1900s, Many missionaries went to mainland China, and there was a great outpouring of prayer and people being sent by the Lord to go there to preach the gospel to the millions upon millions of unsaved people in mainland China.

And, of course, Hudson Taylor was a great servant of the Lord, used by the Lord to bring the gospel to China.

Well, as a result of those faithful missionaries going to China, many of the Chinese people were saved.

And one particular young man was saved who became a great gift to the Lord's body.

And this was Watchman Nee.

He was saved by the Lord in 1920 at the age of 17.

We pointed out earlier, this one flow is seen in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, isn't it?

I say two things, but in reality, are these two things? What's the distinction here if there are two separate things happening?

Well, Chris, this is a good question, and I think it can help us in our Christian life.

On the one hand, you have the cloud covering the tent of meeting.

On the other hand, you have the glory of Jehovah filling the tabernacle inwardly.

And I think what we need to see here is there's two aspects of our experience of Christ.

There's the outward aspect and there's the inward aspect.

Outwardly, with respect to man, God's dwelling place was considered the tent of meeting.

You've got about three minutes.

Ed, I think this broadcast today is going to need a little review and background for those listeners that were not with us last time.

The previous program on Hiram, the skillful builder of the pillars, was quite marvelous.

Hiram was the one who built the pillars in the temple.

What we see from this is that firstly, we need to be transformed to be pillars in God's building, which is the church, the body of Christ.

But we shouldn't just be satisfied with being transformed to be pillars.

We need to become pillar builders.

With Hiram, Second Chronicles two fourteen tells us that his mother was from the daughters of Dan.

Let's rejoin Witness Lee for our conclusion.

Maybe for an introduction today, you could give us the intrinsic meaning of the Sabbath and why it's fitting to see it in the context of feasting.

Right.

Well, Chris, this is very important.

And like you pointed out, the Sabbath is mentioned in verse 21 of chapter 34.

And then in verses 18 and verse 22, we have the feasts mentioned.

So this context is very important.

And what we need to see from chapter 34, again, the picture here, how we believers need to enjoy Christ following our initial salvation.

What about us, Ed? How can we apply and experience Christ as our rest and enjoyment, our full satisfaction, as you've been saying?

Can you develop this more for us?

Yes, we've seen from Brother Lee's sharing thus far that 18 is one half of three complete units of 12 cubits.

This is very significant.

The number three, of course, is the number of the triune God.

This means that if we are going to be a pillar in God's house, we need to be those who are filled, saturated, and permeated with the Triune God.

But regardless of how much we are filled, saturated, and permeated with the Triune God, we need to realize we are not a complete unit.

We are only half.

Explain this for us.

Yes,

the thought of going to church actually is a traditional concept, and this concept is actually a corruption concept.

Because when you say we need to go to church, that means you look at the church as a physical building or a physical place.

But the New Testament tells us that the church is not a place.

The church is the body of Christ.

And the body of Christ is only one.

There is only one body of Christ.

Is there any connection between God revealing himself with this title to Jacob here and his use of the same title with Abraham?

Would you say more about this?

Yes, you're absolutely right.

This is a tremendous point.

And in this chapter, what we see is that God charged Jacob to go back to Bethel.

And that means to come back to God's original intention to have the house of God.

And we see in 1 Timothy 3.15 that the church is the house of the living God.

All of us as believers in Christ, we need to come back to God's original intention.

To me, it seems significant that we don't see God coming to him outwardly to speak to him about these defiling things.

We just heard that these four items, the stone, the pillar, the house, and the oil, are the basic composition of the whole Bible.

These four items are absolutely marvelous, and I would like to just start with this matter of the house of God.

This phrase, the house of God, which Jacob named this place where he had this dream.

He named it Bethel.

Bethel means the house of God.

This is what God desires in this universe.

He wants to dwell in man, and he wants man to dwell in him.

What is meant by the term, the enlarged God?

"And as to His having raised Him up from the dead, no longer to return to corruption, he spoke in this way: 'I will give you the holy things of David, the faithful things.'" Ed, what about this last phrase? What does it refer to, the holy things of David, the faithful things?

things?We just pointed out that Acts 13, 33 speaks of the resurrected Christ as the firstborn Son of God.

And then we go on to verse 34, and in verse 34 it talks about Christ being raised up from the dead and God giving us the holy and faithful things of David.

Holy and faithful things is one Greek word.

Okay, then you go to the next verse, it says, therefore he also says in another place, you will not allow your holy one to see corruption.

Now, when we put this all together, the Greek word for holy one is the singular of the Greek word for holy and faithful things.

The resurrected Christ himself as the holy one is the holy and faithful things of David.

In a sense, the Lord has used this rejection for his purpose, hasn't he?

Let's stop and develop this a little bit.

Yeah, Matt, it's really remarkable that all of these aspects of the Lord's processes that He went through are in the Spirit.

Of course, we have to realize that John 1.14 says the Word became flesh, and then 1 Corinthians 15.45b says the last Adam, who was Christ in the flesh, became a life-giving spirit.

So as the spirit, he includes all of these items typified by these four elements.

And I'd just like to review them again because they're so depictive.

Firstly, you have myrrh, which signifies the precious death of Christ.

And myrrh was used in ancient times to reduce pain, to reduce pain.

But I appreciate how this picture in the Old Testament is contrasting the priesthood with the priests that we are in the New Testament living according to our spirit compared to the strangers who are disqualified from the compound ointment because they live according to their flesh.

Share more with us along this line.

Yes, in our Christian life, suffering and enjoying Christ is everything go together.

In Vine's expository dictionary, Vine tells us that grace is something that causes pleasure or delight.

And we know it says that grace came through Jesus Christ.

Actually, grace is the person of Christ himself.

It's God in Christ as the Spirit dispensed into us for our enjoyment.

Now, in our Christian experience, we go through many trials, tribulations, and sufferings.

Would you comment on the understanding that blessing is something given by God that remains outside of us, and grace is that which is given by God inwardly and ultimately wrought into us?

Can you elaborate a bit more on these from the experiential side.

Chris, this is just a marvelous picture of our experience of Christ.

We need to take this tour every day.

We start at the altar in the outer court where we enjoy Christ as the reality of all the offerings.

We continue to the laver where we get the washing of the water in the word.

And then we enter into the tabernacle where we enjoy him and we feast on him as our spiritual food, which is the showbread.

Actually, in the Hebrew text, this is face bread, which some translations translate it the bread of the presence.

We saw all these wonderful items of the experience of Christ in typology, but in summary, how is it that the law of life is the focus of all of the experiences of life?

Ed, all these marvelous, uh, extraordinary things that Christ is in his being, these items of his riches, yet this very simple way, uh, he read this verse in Romans chapter 10, "The Lord is rich to all who call upon him," simple way to really experience him in so many items.

Yes, Chris, we're talking about Christ in his unsearchable riches, and, uh, we may think, oh, this is so deep, so high.

How can I experience this unsearchably rich Christ? Well, Chris, this to me, it's like the ocean.

You know, the ocean is so vast, so deep, but it's simple to experience the ocean.

You can get a boat and go out in it, and you go fishing in it, and you can go swimming in it.

You might not understand it, but it's very simple.

And, you know, using this illustration, the Lord has made it very simple for us to experience him.

Mm-hmm.

What about Christ, Ed, as a synonym for forbearance?

Yeah, Chris, this is just wonderful.

And again, you know, in chapter 1, Paul expressed an aspiration to magnify Christ in any situation he was in.

He was in a bad situation.

Actually, he was in prison at this time.

But he wanted Christ to be magnified in his body.

That means he wanted Christ to be enlarged in him.

And also, you touched something a moment ago that I'd like to go back to, and that was this matter of Paul learning the secret here.

It's one of the truly great revelations in all of scripture.

Yes, Chris, this vision is very significant, and just real briefly, you know, this whole portion of the word, Acts ten, nine through sixteen, tells us how Peter went up to the housetop to pray.

And while he was praying, a trance came upon him, and it says, "He beheld heaven opened, and a certain vessel like a great sheet descending, being let down by four corners onto the earth, in which were all the four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth and birds of heaven." And of course, the voice came to him from heaven and said, "Rise up, Peter, slay, and eat." And Peter didn't want to do that.

He said, "By no means, Lord.

I've never eaten anything common or unclean." And the voice came to him and said, "The things that God has cleansed, do not make common." That was the Lord's word to him.

Well, what we see from this, Chris, is that this vessel like a great sheet symbolizes the gospel spreading to the four corners of the inhabited earth to collect all kinds of unclean and sinful people.

All these four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth and birds of heaven in this sheet signify people.

Ed, do you think the Lord may be trying to refocus His people in this regard today in our time?

Help us with the background of this chapter.

This chapter, Genesis 22, is very significant because what it speaks about is the peak of Abraham's experience with God.

Uh, in this chapter, we see that God tells Abraham in verse two to take his only son, Isaac, his beloved son, to go into the land of Moriah and to offer Isaac as a burnt offering on one of the mountains there.

This is in verse two.

Then in verse nine, we see that when Abraham and Isaac came to the place where God told him to, uh, offer Isaac, Abraham built an altar and laid the wood in order, and he bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

Then in verse 12, we see that what God did was he stopped Abraham, and he said, "Don't lay your hand upon the lad and don't do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your only son from me." So this chapter is very significant in that it shows Abraham's peak experience in satisfying God because of his obedience by faith.

And what we'll see here in a marvelous way is that the offering of Isaac typifies the offering of Christ as God's only begotten Son, the Lamb of God, on the cross.

I just would like to ask you your impressions of this deeply moving picture.

What does this mean, Ed? It sounds a little strange to our natural ears.

Yes, Chris, and this is a good question.

When we consider this question, we have to look at the whole book of Hebrews.

Hebrews reveals that Christ, is our great high priest.

Well, if you look in the Old Testament, you have the priesthood according to the order of Aaron.

Well, the New Testament reveals that Christ was the real Aaron.

What did Aaron do? He offered the sacrifices for sins.

Ed, how do we experience this kind of energizing motor in our daily life?

But these two marvelous things, as wonderful as they are, are not adequate to accomplish this reconstituting work, are they? Talk about that.

No, they're not, Chris.

And Chris, I think a marvelous picture of this is in the Old Testament.

You know, with the children of Israel, they were under Egyptian tyranny, and they were under Pharaoh's domination.

So what did God do? He came in to judge Egypt.

And of course, the children of Israel...

They slew that Passover lamb.

Ed, we've got this marvelous treasure that has been shined into us, but it's enclosed, it's encased with a flawed earthen vessel, isn't it? But it really highlights, magnifies how the power then must be of God and not of us.

What does a dog's inability to fly have to do with the constitution of the kingdom of the heavens?

To me, this fellowship that we just heard is very, very helpful.

I remember when I was in college, I took a course where we covered Matthew 5 through 7.

I took that course.

I didn't believe in the Lord Jesus at that time.

And when I read Matthew 5, 6, and 7, the question I had is, who can do these things? I mean, if someone strikes you on the cheek, you turn to him the other cheek.

Who could do these things in Matthew 5 through 7? Like for instance, on this broadcast, we're going to be talking about anxiety.

But if we look at it in light of being ready for the kingdom, it can also have a very detrimental effect to our growth in life, can't it?

Right.

And that's the issue of Christ dispensing himself into us with all his unsearchable riches, and by that we become his fullness, his expression.

Then in chapter 4, if you look in verse 15 and 16, it says that the body is growing and that by the functioning of all the parts of the body, causes the growth of the body under the building up of itself in love.

This is in verses 15 and 16 of chapter 4.

When you come to chapter 5 in verses 25 through 27, these verses tell us that Christ gave himself up for the church, that he loves the church, that he's sanctifying the church so that he can prepare the church to be his glorious bride without any spot or wrinkle.

Then in chapter 6, what we see, we pointed this out, is the church as the warrior of God.

The church puts on the whole armor of God, and in particular, takes up the sword of the Spirit.

This needs to be our daily kind of salvation, doesn't it, even as ones who are eternally destined to be with the Lord.

But let's talk about it in the context in which we've just heard it, Ed.

Yeah, Chris, I think we really need to see that on the one hand, when we receive the Lord as our life and our Savior, we are saved eternally.

That's one aspect.

But there's another aspect.

There's the aspect of reward and discipline.

And the Bible, the New Testament, talks repeatedly about this.

And that discipline takes place in the next age, the age of the kingdom of a thousand years.

If this person had had a kind of repentance just before they executed him, would that mean then that he is qualified for the full blessing of salvation? This really addresses this issue, doesn't it?

Ed, how does this term fit in the context of Romans chapter 8?

Well, Chris, what we see is, in the entire Book of Romans, is that God's eternal purpose is to have many sons, and these many sons form a body to express Christ.

This is God's eternal purpose.

So what has to happen is there has to be a mass production of God's firstborn Son.

Romans 8:29 speaks of Christ as the firstborn among many brothers.

When Christ rose from the dead, he became the firstborn Son of God, and we became the many sons of God, the many brothers of Christ.

Christ is the prototype, and the many sons become the mass reproduction of that prototype.

How do we reconcile these two thoughts?

But there's a real connection, isn't there, between bringing these two metaphors together at the end of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3.

Chris, there really is a connection, I think, that will help all of us in our experience of Christ.

Chris, as you pointed out in the introduction, the first metaphor that Paul uses to describe himself and his co-workers in their ministry is that they are in a triumphal procession.

that they have been captured by Christ.

He uses this picture of a Roman general who conquers the captives and leads all these captives in a triumphal procession.

Well, we used to be Satan's captives, but Christ defeated Satan on the cross.

He resurrected.

Ed, this is one of those deep points, as he said, Without some experience, very hard to understand this, but help us with it to the degree that you have experienced this.

oh wonderful

i mean you consider this you know firstly your gird your loins with truth who is truth right christ is truth you know in john 14 6 he says i am the truth so we have to enjoy and experience christ as truth to gird our loins with truth Then we have to put on the breastplate of righteousness for our protection.

We'll see more concerning this later.

But who is our righteousness? Christ is our righteousness.

1 Corinthians 1.30 tells us this.

Then we have to, on our feet, we need to put some shoes.

We have to shod our feet with the firm foundation of the gospel of peace.

He's the water of

But now we come to 2 Corinthians, and I think it's important that we take these two books together because they're very related in some aspects, aren't they?

They are, Chris.

And in 1 Corinthians, the church in Corinth has a lot of problems.

And the reason for all these problems, if you look at the end of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians, is the Corinthians, they were fleshly and they were soulish.

That meant they were living in their flesh.

They were dominated by their flesh.

They were living in their soul, you know, which is the mind is the main part of their soul.

Yeah, he's